Image Credit- ICC
The drop-in pitches that will be used at Eisenhower
Park in New York for the Men’s T20 World Cup, according to Adelaide Oval head
groundsman Damien Hough, are unique in the world in terms of how they are set
up, with some of the trays being built in Adelaide before being shipped to
Florida and then moved to the new venue ahead of the tournament.
Given their experience growing and preparing drop-in
pitches over the past ten years, Hough and his team at Adelaide Oval Turf
Solutions have been appointed by the ICC to supervise the delivery and
preparation of the drop-in pitches at the pop-up stadium in New York.
Hough clarified that the process of getting the
pitches ready for the World Cup has been challenging, with a lot of
logistical challenges involved.
“It’s a bit tricky, we basically built six of the
10 trays here in Adelaide,” Hough told Channel 7. “We made them
modular. We’re really proud of them. We’ve got a couple out of the back that
will probably come out here [on Adelaide Oval] next year.
“We put them in a shipping container and send
them really wherever we want around the world. But they’ve gone over to
Florida. And I’ve just come back from a month of work over there putting the
trays together, putting the soil in, compacting them and putting the grass on.
So we’re in the grow-in phase.
“We’ve got a business, a company over there
called LandTek that are helping us with the grow-in phase. Then there’s a
couple more strategic trips throughout the next six months to do some work on
them and then transport them from Florida all the way up to New York where
we’ll put them in and prepare them.
“It’s a lot of work that’s gone into it so far.
But the real work starts around the start of May. It’ll take two days to
transport them up which is quite incredible. Never done that before. So there’s
a lot of firsts. And then there’s getting them in the ground.
“Four go into that venue, that pop-up stadium,
34,000-seat stadium. Eight games in 10 days. One of them is Pakistan and India
which will be amazing. And then there’s six that go into the warm-up venue with
so many teams rotating through and so much training.”